For many Japanese people, robots were a staple of pop culture growing up. From Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (known here by his original name, which translates as Mighty Atom) in the 1950s and 60s, to the towering, martial robots of the "Gundam" and "Evangelion" universes, to name but a few, robots have long held a special place in the collective imagination./cnn/